A friend of mine, did not realize that the second pic of the plane above is a crop of the first -just for those who did not realize that.

That crop is amazing, you can almost see what is written in the pilot's hat. I am getting more excited about this camera by the minute. Now hopefully housings come up soon. I am traveling in a couple of weeks after a long time without taking photos underwater, but still with my good old D2x.

That crop is amazing, you can almost see what is written in the pilot's hat. I am getting more excited about this camera by the minute. Now hopefully housings come up soon. I am traveling in a couple of weeks after a long time without taking photos underwater, but still with my good old D2x.

I think particularly the macro guys are going to go nuts underwater with this camera; really gives meaning to taking a medium format camera underwater in a practical way. Wide angle, there may be fewer keepers as one will absolutely have to nail the focus....but when one does....bam! For some shooting situations the frame rate and cache size will be limiting, but more often, flash recycling will be the limiting factor.

Interests:filming/editing/exotic travel. l write reviews of editing software, books, tutorials and Mac based NLE related products for the www.kenstone.net and www.lafcpug.org sites as well as articles for Asian Diver Magazine and wetpixel. I am one of the founding members of the San Diego UnderSea Film Festival

Posted 29 March 2012 - 07:34 AM

Spoke to my contact at a major store back East in N.Y. He said there is a long waiting list for the D 800 and that Nikon has placed a restricted price on it, meaning they can't raise or lower the $2995.00 price for bargaining purposes. Don't know if it is true or not but was also told that Nikon is planning on raising the price as well in the near future so, if you want one, get it now.
Steve

www.kenstone.net
www.lafcpug.org

Steve Douglas
steve-sharksdelight@cox.net

I have worked as an unpaid reviewer for the editing websites since 2002. Most all hardware and software is sent to me free of charge, however, in no way am I obligated to provide either positive or negative evaluations. Any suggestions I make regarding products are a result of my own, completely, personal opinions and experiences with said products.

I'll probably get a D800 soon but speaking as someone who regularly takes pictures that get published, the Editor of Diver Mag (UK) asked me to write a caption for next month's cover picture. He gave me the file number but the picture I found on my library HDs was different. So I went in to his office and looked at the file there and discovered it was not a .NEF but a .RAF file. Not only that but I hardly recognised the picture because the art editor had cropped a section of the original DX frame that was smaller that the nail on my pinky.

What does .RAF signify? It was shot years ago on a Fuji S2 Pro! The quality was excellent thanks to a conversion with CS4 (not even 5 or 6).

I'll get a D800 so that I have aft deck credibility but I'm not sure that it will make me a better photographer.

Edited by John Bantin, 29 March 2012 - 09:11 AM.

I buy my own photographic kit. Diving equipment manufacturers and diving services suppliers get even-handed treatment from me whether they choose to advertise in the publications I write for or not. All the equipment I get on loan is returned as soon as it is finished with.Did you know you can now get Diver Mag as an iPad/Android app?

Thanks Don. I cannot see why my original link did not work. I will be trying the 14-24 when Aquatica produce the housing and this will, hopefully, produce outstanding results for stills and video. I have mentioned to Jean about the importance of being able to connect an external recorder to capture the clean HDMI output.

Thanks Don. I cannot see why my original link did not work. I will be trying the 14-24 when Aquatica produce the housing and this will, hopefully, produce outstanding results for stills and video. I have mentioned to Jean about the importance of being able to connect an external recorder to capture the clean HDMI output.

I think in general housing manufacturers should pay attention to the cable access door to allow users to have access to all the inlets and outlets, mic headphone, USB and HDMI. A sweet solution would be some type of prewired bulkhead that would allow external connections of choice, with a nice clean plug in of all the cables to the camera.

Despite the D4 being far less popular than the D800 for underwater photography - I suspect we'll see D4 housings first, simply because the camera was announced considerably earlier. And those housings will give us feeling for how housing manufacturers will deal with this new requirement.

I would expect just the opposite, that D800 housings would appear first and be made by almost every serious housing manufacturer. If I were a housing manufacturer, I probably wouldn't bother with a D4 housing as sales will probably be so meager that getting a reasonable return on the effort will be difficult unless the D4 fits into the manufacturer's D3 housing with very little changes. The time difference between the introduction and availability of the two cameras was quite brief. The pricing and features of the D800 also appeal to a far wider section of the general pubic and, in my opinion, to underwater photographers. The D800 costs about half the price of the D4. And is smaller and lighter which allows a smaller and lighter housing. Easier to travel with. The D800, because it has a pop-up flash, has a flash compensation button which allows a photographer to have excellent control over any i-TTL flashes WITH the camera held to your eye. This allows you to shoot different iTTL flash outputs very easily and very quickly. And shooting with flash is something that most underwater photographers do on almost every shot. In my opinion, for any photographer who uses flash a lot, the D800 is the more professional camera. The higher frame rate of the D4 might be of some advantage if you are shooting only ambient light pictures of subjects like large marine mammals. But virtually no underwater flash can recycle fast enough to keep up with even the D800's faster frame rates, so when shooting with flash the much faster frame rate of the D4 is of very little value. These are the same reasons I chose the D700 over the multiple variations of D3. And why I'm buying D800's instead of D4's.

And with a little luck and some skilled machine shop work, I'm hoping to be able to fit D800's into my D700 housings.

I certainly agree with your logic, Fred. That's why I also chose F100 over F5, D100 over D1x, and D700 over D3 (although I did do 4 trips with the D3 before the D700 was available). My exception was D2X over D200, mainly because the D200 had a significantly poorer sensor and much poorer AF.

That said, I think that the housing makers have been a little surprised how soon the D800 arrived and the delay on the D4 closed that gap further. But I based my expectations on the fact that most started work on the D4 housings as soon as it was announced in January and therefore projects were well advanced before the D800 became a reality (despite the fact some of us were already using it - I didn't tell any housing manufacturers about it until it was officially announced). But I don't doubt that for a moment that the D800 is the far more important camera for underwater photographers.

It will also be fascinating to review - to see how much of the resolution can be realised in wide angle and whether switching to DX mode is a huge benefit or just a frustration that you are throwing away 2/3s of your resolution. I honestly don't have a clue to the answers - and I think that is very exciting!

[quote I will be trying the 14-24 when Aquatica produce the housing and this will, hopefully, produce outstanding results for stills and video. I have mentioned to Jean about the importance of being able to connect an external recorder to capture the clean HDMI output.[/quote]

Hi Andy,don#t you think that a external microphone would be useful also???

is it possible for you to shoot some extreme macros to look for the optimum f-stop ( for max dof)before diffraktion starts to be a problem. I am coming from DX and shoot extreme macro with F-stop 28-36. would you think that would be possible with the D800?

Thanks Don. I cannot see why my original link did not work. I will be trying the 14-24 when Aquatica produce the housing and this will, hopefully, produce outstanding results for stills and video. I have mentioned to Jean about the importance of being able to connect an external recorder to capture the clean HDMI output.

I am definitely interested to see how you do with the 14-24, and what setup you use. I have yet to be impressed with the performance of this lens behind a dome from others' images, and still prefer the 16-35

Two reasons for this post; first to post a pic of Talia - our inspirational 12 year old neighbor who has endured 5 years of chemotherapy, radiation and surgery.And then one more D800 image, now in the studio. Never owned a MF camera before, now I do. Had to tone down the skin detail with Portraiture plug-in.

I am definitely interested to see how you do with the 14-24, and what setup you use. I have yet to be impressed with the performance of this lens behind a dome from others' images, and still prefer the 16-35

I was speaking with Jean from Aquatica at LIDS and he pointed out this problem. I've only used the 14-24 with a DX sensor so far but I expect the edge sharpness will be lacking with the D800 in FX mode.

[quote name='sharky1961' post='305552' date='Mar 31 2012, 11:40 AM'][quote I will be trying the 14-24 when Aquatica produce the housing and this will, hopefully, produce outstanding results for stills and video. I have mentioned to Jean about the importance of being able to connect an external recorder to capture the clean HDMI output.

Hi Andy,don#t you think that a external microphone would be useful also???

is it possible for you to shoot some extreme macros to look for the optimum f-stop ( for max dof)before diffraktion starts to be a problem. I am coming from DX and shoot extreme macro with F-stop 28-36. would you think that would be possible with the D800?

Rob[/quote]

I'll do some test shots to see how much the diffraction will degrade the image. I've been reading on the web about this and some people feel that it is not a big deal in practice. External microphone sounds like a good idea!!